Mr Carlo Scotto might be Italian, but that doesn’t mean he only cooks Italian food. The chef, born in Naples, most recently headed up the kitchen at Babbo in Mayfair, and this month opens his first solo venture in Marylebone: Xier. The restaurant is split into two distinct dining areas. XR on the ground floor is 62-cover restaurant and bar. And while certainly still pushing boundaries, the menu here is considerably more accessible than what goes on upstairs.

Above XR, Xier itself is a more intimate 36-seater restaurant with an intense classical piano soundtrack and an adventurous tasting menu that includes flourishes of red-pepper gel, rose-cured salmon served with tiny balls of Bramley apple, and an exquisite foie gras doused in beetroot powder. It is extravagant, challenging food that Mr Scotto stresses is a worldly take on modern European cuisine. Here, he gives us an insight into how he cooks.

I want to make my mark on the London food scene, which is why I have not chosen to open just another Italian restaurant. I want people to enjoy my creations, especially the tasting menu at Xier and I want them to leave completely satisfied and return. I feel that as a chef you need to have passion in everything that you do and I really try and portray that in all of my food.

**I really love using citrus fruits, oranges, limes, lemons, yuzu, throughout all of my cooking. **They are really good for acidity and balancing out the sweetness and sourness of a dish. For example, one of my favourite dishes at XR is the harissa chicken with peppers and spinach. It comes with a delicious and light lime mayonnaise. The tuna tartare comes with a great ponzu dressing, too. I use yuzu in my red prawn crudo at Xier, which really cuts through the sweetness of the red caviar.

It is really important to get the balance of each element exactly right on the plate. My salmon and foie gras dish on Xier’s 10-course tasting menu is the perfect example. They are two ingredients that you would not normally pair together, but with the right amount and with the right technique used to cook them, you get a combination of something extraordinary.

I was quite a troubled kid and found the only time I was really content was when I put a chef jacket on. My first time in a professional kitchen was at the age of 13 and I still have the same feeling now when I put my chef jacket on. Seeing the joy on people’s faces when they taste my food is what being a chef is all about.

Of course, I love food and flavours and tasting different dishes, but my real love for food is when I am cooking for people. I want to tell the journey of everyone involved and the produce that created the dish through the sensory journey of eating it. I work really hard to deliver the best and make sure that each dish is perfect, and the quality is consistent.

Everyone thinks that opening a restaurant is something that comes about easily and is “cool” and profitable from day one. This isn’t true. Working in a restaurant is really challenging with extremely long hours and having a successful restaurant takes time. Bringing the perfect team together is also a challenge. Just like the ingredients on a plate, the bond of a team is integral to having a successful restaurant.